Running from 2000 to 2008, Free Time  was an annual four-day festival of free events that centred around Fountain Court within London’s Somerset House – a mischievous square where the propriety of the grand neo-classical buildings is disrupted by jets of water that spring from the ground in unpredictable sequence.

Over the years this family festival was visited, among others, by early years innovators Oily Cart, poet John Hegley, dance troupe Akademi, and Catalonian demon barbers Osadia. One year sculptor Jonathan Reid made a series of pieces that each day enlisted visiting children as illustrators, costume makers, sound designers and choreographers to create a messy multidisciplinary performance weaving in and out of the fountains.